The Con Man's Daughter

by Ed Dee

  "The guy in the jumpsuit is the guy who broke into the house," Babsie said. "That's the guy in the backseat, the one holding Kate. Kevin gave me a fair description. I'm hoping he does better with the sketch artist."

  The man Kevin saw carried a long black toolbox. Given the jumpsuit and toolbox, Kevin figured the guy was a mechanic coming to work on Eddie's Olds. Normally, Eddie left the Olds out on the street because it bled oil. But Kevin'd had no way of knowing that Kate had used the Olds yesterday because her Toyota was in the shop. She'd parked it behind the house. From his window, Kevin could see part of the Olds, but not Eddie's back door. He couldn't see the guy in the watch cap using a sharp-edged tool to separate the dead bolt from the wooden door frame.

  "Tell me again about the BMW," Babsie said. "Anything unusual to identify it-dents, dings, bumper stickers?"

  "It looked like a police or government car."

  "You're kidding me, Eddie. A BMW cop car? What the hell makes you think that! Antennas, emergency lights, what?"

  "It was filthy. Looked like it hadn't been washed in months."

  "I have a Crown Vic like that outside, but you can't be serious. That's not a reason to assume it's government."

  "It looked like the kind of car they seize from drug dealers. You know, the ones that sit in some impound lot while the paperwork is going through. They get this film on them. A grimy film."

  "Okay, so going along with that leap in logic, why would law enforcement want you bad enough to break into your house and snatch your daughter?"

  "I don't know," he said. "But don't kid yourself, Babsie. People get caught wrong, they panic. Cops or not, they panic. Cops make bad decisions."

  That much he knew for sure. He was the king of bad decisions. Including this morning, when he'd spent too much time trying to catch the BMW that contained his daughter. Then instead of calling the police immediately, he'd spent another ten minutes running back to Christ the King to get Grace. Only after he'd had his granddaughter in his arms did he call the Yonkers PD and give them the plate number. A smart man would have stopped, called the police immediately, then called the school. Instead, Eddie gave his daughter's kidnappers a fifteen-minute head start. This would not have surprised Eileen. She always said he tried to solve all his problems physically, and used his head only for butting against a tavern wall.

  "Let's talk about what you heard," Babsie said.

  "Heard?" he said, feeling the blood drain from his face. He hadn't mentioned hearing anything.

  "Like sounds. Anything unusual from the car? Loose muffler, loud music? Country, rap, or some odd ethnic music?"

  "No music. Kate yelled something, but I couldn't understand it," Eddie said, lying. He knew exactly what his daughter had said.

  "Tell me again what she was wearing," Babsie said.

  "A green-plaid flannel shirt, and she had her hair pulled back. You know, held back by an elastic thing, in like a ponytail, but thicker, wilder."

  "What are the chances Kate was the intended target?"

  "This wasn't a planned kidnapping, Babsie. No one knew she'd be here. She only decided to stay home from work a few hours ago."

  "What about the ex-husband?"

  "Asshole."

  "That's what I heard. I think he took lessons from my ex. You have a name and address?"

  "Scott D'Arcy. Half-assed chef of some kind. Lives in Seattle now, and he could give a shit less about Kate. His address is probably in her book, if you want it."

  "No recent contact, no custody battle?"

  "He hasn't even sent Grace a birthday card in three years."

  "Okay, then, whatta we got?" Babsie said, slapping her notebook on the table. "It's not a custody case, or a jealous husband. It's not a law-enforcement screwup; I'm not buying that. We're left with the obvious, Eddie: These were bad guys looking for something in here. Only possibility. You gotta give us some direction, pal. What's going on here?"

  The house had been thoroughly searched. They'd tossed all the closets, emptied dresser drawers. Shelves had been cleared off, pictures taken down, the Dunne family possessions strewn across the floors. Even the basement had been searched with the same focus. Not vandalism-nothing was destroyed. But a manic hunt for something.

  "They were looking for something," he said.

  "Ya think? Eddie, come on. We're wasting time here. What were they looking for?"

  "If I knew that, I'd give it to them. Take every goddamn thing."

  Babsie's cell phone rang. She stood and answered it as she walked into the living room. Eddie checked the clock. White chickens stared back. What the hell's the sense? he thought. Just when I get my life together, all hell breaks loose. Guys like me never get off the hook. I was a jerk for thinking I could. At least Grace is safe, next door with Aunt Martha, baking cookies for the cops.

  "Scarsdale," Babsie said, slipping the phone back into her pocket. "They say the BMW was stolen. Owners don't even know it's gone."

  "How could they not know it's gone?"

  "It was taken from a storage facility in Elmsford. The owners have been in Europe for three weeks. Their phone messages were being call-forwarded to the husband's law office in White Plains."

  "I'll lay odds the storage place has no idea how long the car's been missing."

  "Probably not," she said. "But three weeks of sitting in an auto-storage facility accounts for the car being so grimy."

  "Who're the owners?"

  "Didn't get their names."

  Eddie knew she did, but that she wasn't about to tell him.

  "It's time for some deep thinking on your part," Babsie said. "What's your gut telling you? I know your gut is telling you something."

  Eddie Dunne believed it was better to think the worst, get ahead of the tragedy. Right now… this moment… envision something terrible, before it happens, he thought. God doesn't like this, because if He sees you're toughening up, getting ready for the worst, then no way does He let it happen. God is a surprise guy. He rips your heart out with the things you don't anticipate.

  "You know I worked for the Russians?" he said.

  "I heard you were doing something in Brighton Beach."

  "I quit almost four years ago, but for the ten years prior, I worked for a man named Anatoly Lukin. The FBI and NYPD intelligence have linked him to Russian organized crime."

  He spelled Lukin's full name, then told her what she would hear from the FBI.

  "You think Lukin is behind this?" she said.

  "No. He's just an old man, very sick."

  "Then who?"

  "Enemies," he said, the idea of it squeezing at the pit of his stomach. "We made a lot of enemies."

  "Names, Eddie, names."

  "Yuri Borodenko," he said. "Start with that one."

  Babsie wrote furiously; it was a name she'd heard. Then she excused herself. Her back to Eddie, she walked into the living room again, talking quietly into her cell phone. He could have told her more, but what good would it do? He took a deep breath and composed himself. He couldn't let emotions interfere now.

  Babsie had almost gotten to him with her question about sounds. The last sound he'd heard was Kate's voice. He knew that the sound of her voice at that moment would play in his mind for all the nights of his life. The flickering picture would fade, but her voice, hoarse and desperate, would always be there. She'd screamed one word, and all the failures of his life came out in that word. It was a word he hadn't heard her use since she was a child. He'd been "Dad" since her early teens. But this morning, his tough-minded thirty-four-year-old daughter had called for him. "Daddy," she'd screamed. Just "Daddy."

  Chapter 3

  Monday

  3:45 P.M.

  It was late afternoon when Eddie Dunne's Olds swerved around the corner of West Tenth Street in Coney Island. The trip down from Yonkers was a blur in his mind. Eddie couldn't bear sitting in that house any longer. He'd annoyed everyone with his muttering and pacing. He'd kept raising his arms, fists cocked, dying to hit so
mething. Over the objections of Babsie Panko and the FBI, he'd left his brother Kevin to wait by the phone. He needed to get moving. He'd borrowed Kevin's cell phone and, on the way to Brooklyn, called his ex-boss. Not a direct call-Anatoly Lukin never spoke on the phone.

  Eddie parked in the shadow of the rickety old roller coaster, the Cyclone. He turned the engine off and waited, studying the cars moving behind him on Surf Avenue. Waves pounded against the shore as he stared at the rearview mirror. After three full minutes, he slammed the car door and walked toward the boardwalk. He was still wearing the frayed sweatshirt and nylon running pants he'd put on that morning.

  Anatoly Lukin, like many of his fellow Russian émigrés, loved to spend his afternoons by the ocean. Even on the most frigid days, the boardwalk was packed with beefy men and women in fur hats, reminiscing about Odessa and the icy wind off the Black Sea. Lukin claimed that the Black Sea was much darker than the Atlantic; during severe storms, it churned as black as ink, because there was no animal life, no oxygen below two hundred feet. Eddie turned left on the boardwalk and walked toward Brighton Beach, a half mile to the east. A seagull swooped down to snatch a pizza crust off the splintery planks.

  Eddie spotted Lukin's entourage near the Aquarium, walking slowly back toward Brighton. The old man dragged his right leg, the result of a stroke. A pair of bodyguards strolled a few steps behind him. Down on the beach, a white-haired gent in an air force parka scanned the sand with a metal detector. Too old for undercover, Eddie thought, but you never know. The Gotti-fueled decline of the Italian mob in New York had freed investigative resources to work on the nouveau Mafias.

  Anatoly Lukin didn't qualify as a member of the new breed. He'd landed in Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, part of the huge influx of Russian Jews allowed to leave the Soviet Union during detente. Many of the new émigrés settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, then turned it into a miniature replica of the motherland with Russian-language movie houses, restaurants, and bathhouses. Most were decent, hardworking people, but Premier Leonid Brezhnev, like Castro with the Mariel boat lift, had opened the prison doors. Anatoly Lukin, forty-two years old at the time, was considered a vor by Russian police. The full title was vory zakone, which meant thief-in-law, a title bestowed by fellow thieves on the most feared and respected of outlaws. According to the FBI, Lukin was one of only four vors living in the United States.

  The wind blew salty spray as Eddie came up behind the bodyguards. He knew they'd spotted him coming, then looked away quickly. He hoped they weren't in the mood for showing off. Today was the wrong day for macho games. But when he was a step behind Lukin, a meaty hand grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and yanked him back. Eddie spun and slammed a left hook into the bodyguard's ribs. The hook was Eddie's best punch. He kept his balance and rotated his body, bringing the force of his rage behind the blow, like a heavy gate swinging around a hinged post, the whole barn pivoting behind it. The burly Russian coughed out a blast of air and staggered back. Eddie stepped in and snapped a straight right, which landed on the guy's cheekbone. The second punch was half-strength-he didn't want to break his hand-but the guy went down hard, flat on his ass, his leather heels clattering on the wood. The other bodyguard went straight to the hardware. A Beretta M9 pointed at Eddie's face.

  Lukin moved between them, murmuring, "No, no, don't let them see this." Lukin assumed he was always being watched. He ordered the bodyguard to put the gun away but kept his huge hand on Eddie's chest until the gun was holstered. A smudge of ink, a Russian prison mark, stained the web of his hand.

  "Why you do that bullshit, Eddie?" the standing bodyguard said. "Pavel's just doing his job."

  "No, he wasn't," Eddie said. "I know what he was doing."

  Pavel's face was ashen. His left eye had already begun to puff up. He pointed up at Eddie and growled something that was clearly a threat in any language. Lukin ordered him to shut his mouth. Still sucking air, Pavel grabbed the wooden rail and pulled himself to his feet.

  The goons who surrounded Lukin had always made it clear they didn't like the non-Russian in the organization. But Lukin knew that Russian criminals changed alliances more often than their underwear. It was one of the reasons he'd hired Eddie. He knew that it was loyalty, no matter how misguided, that had forced Eddie out of the NYPD.

  Lukin motioned for Eddie to walk with him. They turned around quickly, heading back toward Coney Island. Lukin liked to stay in between Coney and Brighton to cut down on surveillance possibilities. Eddie flexed his right hand, examining the small, brittle bones. He could smell Pavel's cheap cologne on his knuckles.

  "No word on your daughter?" the old man asked.

  "Nothing," Eddie said.

  "And now you've come to find out who you should kill."

  Eddie didn't know what to expect from his former boss. The old man didn't owe him anything. Lukin had hired him after his forced resignation from the NYPD and Eileen's cancer diagnosis. These events, and other sins, had become nightmares Eddie could no longer drink away. Becoming Lukin's overpaid courier had given him a solid place to stand.

  "First, I'll get my daughter back," Eddie said.

  The bodyguards were behind them now, talking angrily in Russian. Eddie checked the back of his neck for blood. Pavel's fingernails had dug into his skin.

  "I have no one left to help you fight this animal," said the old man. "These two idiots behind us, maybe six others. He's taken everything else."

  "Then it is Borodenko," Eddie said.

  "Borodenko is in Moscow, but that means nothing. My sources tell me certain things today. He runs this show one hundred percent."

  "You still have sources inside his operation?"

  "For what I pay, they should kiss my feet."

  Yuri Borodenko was a flashy thug who loved to cruise the Brighton Beach nightclubs, showing off his stunning young wife, a former Russian model. Although in the United States only five years, he'd amassed a fortune through extortion and brutality. He was known to walk into local businesses wielding a cattle prod, announcing he was the new partner. An ethnic Russian, Borodenko got rich by terrorizing his own people.

  "Why kidnap my daughter?"

  "Snafu," the old man said. "My source is having breakfast with this braggart Lexy, who's telling him Borodenko calls him this morning from Russia. Very pissed off, Mr. Borodenko. This snafu made him cancel this important shipment due to leave today. A woman is involved in this snafu. Lexy says that Borodenko gives him strict orders to find Sergei, his man to fix this special problem. Lexy is an errand boy, but he's bragging. Big man. As if Borodenko is asking him to fix this problem."

  "This woman is my daughter?"

  "This is what I think."

  "I know Lexy Petrov, the bartender," Eddie said. "But is he talking about Sergei the Macedonian?"

  "No. Sergei Zhukov, a Russian. One of Borodenko's new lunatics. He surrounds himself with people without brains. But how much brains are needed to hit people over the head and say 'Give me your money'?"

  "Why would Borodenko's men be searching my house in the first place?"

  "Money. What else? There's an old Russian saying, Eddie. In English, it means 'The clock is ticking and the house is burning.' The Russians think you should be making money every second of the day and night."

  Lukin offered Eddie a handful of the sunflower seeds that filled his coat pockets.

  "Why would Borodenko think I have money?" Eddie said.

  "Because you worked for me. Last few months, he's been going after my old friends, some with me from the beginning. In case he finds a loose dollar I'm holding out on him. My fellow Russkie wants everything I have, if I have it or not."

  Borodenko made no secret of his ambition to be the most important vor in the United States, then the richest man in the world. A former Soviet army officer, he flaunted his solid connections in the Russian black market, particularly those in the military establishment. Soviet weapons of all types were his advertised specialty.

  "I read about
Ukraine Nicky and Seidler," Eddie said. "The papers said they were robberies. Cash and jewelry stolen both times."

  "Robberies, yes. But torture also. Ukraine Nicky… big thoughts, but harmless, am I right? Yet someone tortures Ukraine Nicky. Then Seidler, the jeweler. Two old men. Tell me, why torture? Because he is looking for my money is why. He believes I am King Midas."

  The old man didn't seem to notice the raw breeze off the ocean. Spring was the worst season at the shore. The ocean took all summer to warm up; then September and October registered the warmest water temperatures. The water stayed warmer than the air until mid-December. But once it got cold, forget about it until July.

  "Put a cash offer on the street, Anatoly."

  "First, I have already sent word that if your daughter should suddenly appear safe and sound, the situation will end there. No retaliation. It won't work, but we'll try this."

  "Whatever it costs," Eddie said. "Ten, twenty grand, fifty grand. I'll get it, whatever it costs."

  "A life is what it will cost. Our friend learned from his KGB friends. He kills the weak links, those who talk; this is automatic, no exceptions. Dead'men can't enjoy your money. No takers will call."

  "Make it worth the chance. Promise more, a million, two million."

  "Inhale some ocean air," Lukin said. "Take deep breaths. Calm yourself, or you'll be no good to anyone."

  Lukin wore a threadbare cardigan sweater and a dark fur hat he claimed was Russian sable. Whatever he'd done in Russia, Lukin didn't function through violence in America. He was a scam artist, a paper-pusher who preyed on big government and big business. In Eddie's opinion, Lukin was no worse than the Armani-clad conspirators on Wall Street, or the thieves in the ivory towers of most corporations.

  "Where should I look for the BMW?" Eddie asked.

  "Don't waste the time," Lukin said. "This morning, Mr. Borodenko planned to send a ship with stolen luxury automobiles to Latvia from a dock in New Jersey. Very lucrative operation. They steal automobiles and hide them. When the ship is ready to sail, they put the automobiles inside containers labeled machinery. Customs pays no attention to what is shipped out of the country. He collects two, three times their value."